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CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#61

Post by Toutouxc »

jl6 wrote: post #30
idontwantthis wrote: post #4

Why does 500wh/kg make electric aircraft possible? 6x less than kerosene. Is that the break even on cost if you can source very cheap electricity? Seems like it would still annihilate the payload/range.

I feel that synthetic kerosene via electrolysis is a far more viable path to sustainable aviation than battery-electric engines. The energy-inefficiency doesn’t really matter as long as you can keep the total cost of the flight within consumer reach.

Carbon neutral synthetic fuels might make sense for airliners, because they're already pretty efficient, reliable and incomprehensibly powerful and there's tons of other stuff in them that'd require maintenance even if you took out the engines.

They don't make sense for general aviation planes that are usually a fifty year-old engine design that requires expensive overhauls and guzzles expensive fuel wrapped in a bit of aluminum.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#62

Post by j16sdiz »

fock wrote: post #16

and then in Germany right wing/neoliberal politicians run around, make smug faces and tell people: ooooh, we need e-fuels because those combustion engines, they are sooooo good, the chinese are envious and will just copy (yes. for tanks...). During their reign: - solar industry: gone (in the 2000s germany had everything, domestically produced) - wind energy: gone (well, Siemens did it themselves too) - existing domes…

> Oh and of course they now want to build nuclear plants after they've shown for the last 30years that we have reached a state of more dysfunctional oligarchy than the Soviet Union ever was

I can't express how much I hate this. In terms of technology and engineering, nuclear is now so mature that it should be used everywhere solar doesn't make sense. Yet, in terms of politics, society and governance, we are still stuck in the state of 1970s. Putting nuclear in their hands is just irresponsible

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#63

Post by beaned »

How was this achieved? It seemed like battery energy density improvements were very marginal. I'd expect that this type of jump could only be achieved with a new significant insight, but the article seems to say it's just traditional process done better and newer. That's very vague:

> the condensed battery integrates a range of innovative technologies, including the ultra-high energy density cathode materials, innovative anode materials, separators, and manufacturing processes

Are these all things that are common knowledge now, and they're just the first ones to slap them all together, and that it's a short matter of time before all battery manufacturers start providing much better density? Or is there something more to it?

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#64

Post by mg »

Key numbers: They doubled Wh/kg from about 280 to about 500.

I assume that thinking about battery capacity form first principles, the theoretical limit is reached when the charged battery consists of 50% matter and 50% antimatter, right?

Then during discharge, the reaction between the two would turn the matter/antimatter into energy.

How would that stack up against the 500Wh/kg stated here?

Update:

Did a bit of googling (Note to my future self: AI was still bad at math in 2023): Looks like 1kg of mass cointains about 25x10^9 Wh.

So if the above assumptions are right, we still have 8 orders of magnitude to go. An electric car with an optimal battery could go 100,000,000 times further on a single charge than the current ones.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#65

Post by 0xy »

Akronymus wrote: post #57
baq wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My plan to buy an EV in the next five years may be realistic after all. Happy!

You may not have a choice in the matter as more and more countries are thinking of/implementing ICE bans in the near future.

They're unlikely to succeed because if the massive tax on poor people (ICE bans) actually gets implemented, all of the poor people who are forced to buy an unaffordable EV will vote for populists promising to unwind the bans.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#66

Post by budoso »

mg wrote: post #64

Key numbers: They doubled Wh/kg from about 280 to about 500. I assume that thinking about battery capacity form first principles, the theoretical limit is reached when the charged battery consists of 50% matter and 50% antimatter, right? Then during discharge, the reaction between the two would turn the matter/antimatter into energy. How would that stack up against the 500Wh/kg stated here? Update: Did a bit of googl…

it’d be quite a bit better

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#67

Post by atleastoptimal »

mg wrote: post #64

Key numbers: They doubled Wh/kg from about 280 to about 500. I assume that thinking about battery capacity form first principles, the theoretical limit is reached when the charged battery consists of 50% matter and 50% antimatter, right? Then during discharge, the reaction between the two would turn the matter/antimatter into energy. How would that stack up against the 500Wh/kg stated here? Update: Did a bit of googl…

probably better

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#68

Post by [deleted] »

fock wrote: post #16

and then in Germany right wing/neoliberal politicians run around, make smug faces and tell people: ooooh, we need e-fuels because those combustion engines, they are sooooo good, the chinese are envious and will just copy (yes. for tanks...). During their reign: - solar industry: gone (in the 2000s germany had everything, domestically produced) - wind energy: gone (well, Siemens did it themselves too) - existing domes…

[deleted]

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#69

Post by censor_me »

Akronymus wrote: post #57
baq wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My plan to buy an EV in the next five years may be realistic after all. Happy!

You may not have a choice in the matter as more and more countries are thinking of/implementing ICE bans in the near future.

[dead]

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#70

Post by ezzaf »

krasin wrote: post #19
idontwantthis wrote: post #4

Why does 500wh/kg make electric aircraft possible? 6x less than kerosene. Is that the break even on cost if you can source very cheap electricity? Seems like it would still annihilate the payload/range.

Let's consider Cessna-172S ([4]). Its characteristics: - 130 kW engine, Lycoming_O-360 that weighs 117 kg. For comparison, an electric motor of this range would weigh 11-13 kg (at 10-12 kW/kg, [2]). That saves 100+ kg weight immediately and we can put 50+ kWh batteries instead. - It carries up to 200 liters of kerosene ([3]), which weighs 164 kg. We can place 82 kWh of batteries instead. - The engine consumes around…

The power requirement at cruising speed would quite a lot less than max power would it not? If cruse consumed 60% of max you'd be using closer to 80kW which would give you over 2 hours flight time.
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